Warriors' forward Draymond Green responds to baffling comments from rival GM

Never afraid of speaking his mind, Golden State Warriors' forward Draymond Green has responded to bizarre comments from Phoenix Suns' General Manager on the career of Kevin Durant.

In the wake of the Suns embarrassing¸ first-round series defeat to the Minnesota Timberwolves, Jones made the claim that Phoenix are still trying to become the first team to maximize Durant after his 16th year in the league.

Draymond Green says he was 'baffled' by James Jones' comments while pointing out Kevin Durant's success at the Golden State Warriors

Jones clearly chose to forego the memory of his experience playing against Durant in the 2017 NBA Finals, something Green was eager to remind him about during his latest podcast episode on Friday.

"I was baffled when I watched James Jones make this comment...James Jones was on a team in 2017 that lost in the NBA Finals to Kevin Durant. When you got your ass bust like the Cavs got their ass bust, I have a hard time believing that James Jones could then come out and say, ‘no one has been able to maximize Kevin Durant.’"

- Draymond Green

Jones played just eight total minutes during the five-game series, giving him ample opportunity to watch on as Durant carved the Cavaliers to pieces on his way to Finals MVP. He averaged 35.2 points on a remarkable 55.6% shooting from the floor and 47.4% from three-point range, while also adding 8.2 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 1.6 blocks and a steal per game.

More to Green's point, how much more could you maximize a player than numbers like that? If that wasn't enough, Durant averaged 28.8 points, 10.8 rebounds, 7.5 assists and 2.3 blocks in a Finals sweep against Cleveland 12 months later.

Durant was highly efficient in the first-round series against the Timberwolves, though his 26.8 points were the third-least of his 13-year playoff career. That would seem to suggest that to Jones' point, the Suns didn't maximize the 35-year-old to the best of his ability.

Yet to suggest he's never been maximised is almost disrespectful to the legacy Durant his built, or at the very least is providing an unfair expectation that he could possibly get better this late in his career.